In 1997, after meditating on the success of {Linux} for three years,
the Jargon File's own editor ESR wrote an analytical paper on hacker
culture and development models titled The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
The main argument of the paper was that {Brooks's Law} is not the
whole story; given the right social machinery, debugging can be
efficiently parallelized across large numbers of programmers. The
title metaphor caught on (see also {cathedral}), and the style of
development typical in the Linux community is now often referred to
as the bazaar mode. Its characteristics include releasing code early
and often, and actively seeking the largest possible pool of peer
reviewers. After 1998, the evident success of this way of doing
things became one of the strongest arguments for {open source}.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {Brooks's Law}{cathedral}{gang bang}{Infinite-Monkey Theorem}{kernel-of-the-week club}{Linux}{Mongolian Hordes technique}{point release}]